The world was extremely quiet.
No one spoke, and a cold wind brushed past the ears, like the sharp laughter of a cat.
——If the game characters on your computer screen were real people, and you were merely confused by "cognition," unable to perceive their reality. You manipulated them over and over with keyboard and mouse, pushing them to their deaths over and over for a bit of reward, deliberately driving them into an abyss of no return for a tragic ending or plot branch, watching them suffer painful deaths with a cold eye——
If one day you found out that they were living people from another world, how would you feel?
The hundreds of cats you slaughtered with your own hands as a butcher were actually brave soldiers. The cat teammates you mocked for being "lousy players" were actually living beings. And for the sake of better game stats, you didn't rescue them, letting them be drowned in "catnip," watching their souls drift to the sky.
